Business organizations often rely on various kinds of data in operating a business and in making business decisions. Increasingly, the data relied on is stored in some form of database or data warehouse. Businesses may desire to store the data for reasons such as increasing productivity, forecasting business trends, providing new business opportunities, or any other of a myriad of business reasons.
Through business operations, large sets of data can be accumulated and managed by businesses. However, the amount of data can become large enough that data management becomes a difficult and complex task. Tasks such as sorting or searching through data may use increasing computing resources and time to complete. Sifting through data to find useful information can be a challenge for businesses.
Frequently business data may be stored electronically in databases. When a number of records in a database rise to a sufficiently large amount, simply sorting the information in a database can provide little meaningful results and businesses may struggle to make efficient use of the tremendous amount of information in databases. While statistical analysis of the records in a database may yield useful information, such analysis may be performed best by persons with advanced training in math or computer science that are able to understand the results of the analysis. Additionally, translation of the statistical analysis of the information in a large database into a form that may be useful for such activities as marketing can also be difficult. Such a situation may prevent the effective use of the information in a database and preclude the use of a possible valuable resource.
Stored data can also be used to analyze software, hardware, and application problems, but a large amount of data can make such an analysis overwhelming. Trying to gather all the data needed to determine whether a problem exists, the nature of the problem, and how to repair the problem can result in software and other solutions that can be extremely complex in nature. Problems, errors, and failures in a computing system can result in incomplete or incorrect data or analysis. Businesses desire to be able to more effectively and efficiently manage and analyze data, as well as databases, and computing resources which may be utilized in the management or analysis of the data. Businesses also desire to be able to better utilize data relating to problem analysis and be able to provide for recovery from failures or errors.